Ability to order support ship to repair and re-arm specific friendly fighters and bombers

[Sessile-Nomad]

I see it working like this in game:

1 - call in support ship (if one is not already in play)

2 - target the friendly fighter/bomber you want repaired/rearmed

3 - select the support ship from the comms menu

4 - select ‘repair my target’ (this being a new order option that this feature would add) Ideally, this needs to be able to override the existing support ship queue.

5 - support ship then rearms/repairs the fighter/bomber as usual.

6 - support ship goes back to retail behaviour, ready to be called in again.

I need this because my campaigns feature support ship repair and rely heavily on wingman control. Those wingmen tend to get badly damaged as a result and will need repair.

It seems the AI only takes into account secondary weapon depletion when it calls in the support ship, so a badly damaged but fully armed fighter/bomber will not call it in.

[naomimyselfandi]

I've definitely noticed critically damaged fighters not calling for support even when support ships repairing hulls is enabled. How much of your use case would be satisfied by making them aware of that?

As for ordering rearms, it's not a bad idea either way. I feel like bypassing the support queue is likely a non-starter: most of the time, the player won't care, either because there's no time pressure or no one else is rearming, so it feels like more complexity than it's worth.

[Sessile-Nomad]

Hi there, good to hear from you. 🙂 Making damaged ships call in repair would probably help, but to what extent I couldn’t say without testing it. It might depend on how quickly they do it. If a fighter is critically damaged but takes ages to bother calling in the support ship it might not work so well, but if they call it in soon it might work ok. It certainly wouldn’t hurt implementing this 👍 Agreed that ordering rearms would be a good idea in general. I assume this could be done as well as the above? I would prefer to be able to override the repair queue since I would like to implement soft time limits similar to Bem Calvalgars’s (take too long in a mission and Hunter-killer teams will start jumping in after you). This would force the player to be selective about which ships to repair (e.g. the most damaged ones, or the ones carrying the most mission-critical weapons) as there may not be time to repair them all. Adding soft time limits without this granularity of control would be too sadistic even for me, since the AI can be pretty dumb ‘’I’m at 98% hull, but I should be repaired first even if alpha 3 is at 2% hull and on fire’’ 🤪 I should point out that the campaigns I’m planning have some missions that are almost a hybrid of Space Combat Sim and an RTS-lite - a bit like Battle-zone 98 but without the base building or resource gathering, so wingmate management is very important. Trying to ‘Alpha One’ everything will just get you killed, so players will have to care about what their wing mates are doing if they are planning on surviving. But if overriding the queue is too difficult then I’ll make do without. I can probably work out a compromise solution (more forgiving soft time limits for example 🙂👍 Sent from Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

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________________________________ From: naomimyselfandi ***@***.***> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2024 1:53:56 PM To: scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com ***@***.***> Cc: Sessile-Nomad ***@***.***>; Author ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com] Ability to order support ship to repair and re-arm specific friendly fighters and bombers (Issue #6289) I've definitely noticed critically damaged fighters not calling for support even when support ships repairing hulls is enabled. How much of your use case would be satisfied by making them aware of that? As for ordering rearms, it's not a bad idea either way. I feel like bypassing the support queue is likely a non-starter: most of the time, the player won't care, either because there's no time pressure or no one else is rearming, so it feels like more complexity than it's worth. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#6289 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANO3RGFPMEKFONCDA3BBCV3ZRCO5JAVCNFSM6AAAAABMKW2K76VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDEOBTG43DKNZZGQ>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[naomimyselfandi]

I get where you're coming from. I just think they can coexist. :) At the very least, critical hull damage should be considered while good-rearm-time is in effect. As for player-initiated orders, it looks like most of the work's already done; the order already exists, but can't (currently) be added to the comms board. (I'm going to change that in FSO, but it's probably possible to set up a LuaAI workaround in the short term.)

[Sessile-Nomad]

Hi there, good to hear from you 🙂 Agreed, them coexisting would be ideal. It’s good to hear some of the work has been done already. Do we know if adding the order to the comms board is technically possible, and if so, is it ‘in the pipeline’ and do we have an ETA for it? (Not trying to be pushy, just trying to plan ahead 🙂) Cheers Sent from Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

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________________________________ From: naomimyselfandi ***@***.***> Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2024 1:56:06 PM To: scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com ***@***.***> Cc: Sessile-Nomad ***@***.***>; Author ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com] Ability to order support ship to repair and re-arm specific friendly fighters and bombers (Issue #6289) I get where you're coming from. I just think they can coexist. :) At the very least, critical hull damage should be considered while good-rearm-time is in effect. As for player-initiated orders, it looks like most of the work's already done; the order already exists, but can't (currently) be added to the comms board. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#6289 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANO3RGAUGS36ZAMQVEUPPY3ZSR55NAVCNFSM6AAAAABMKW2K76VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDGMBRHA3TAOBRGQ>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Sessile-Nomad]

Had a thought. Since the support ship needs the fighter/bomber to be stationary to dock, ordering the support ship to rearm and repair a specific fighter/bomber might not work if the fighter/bomber keeps moving...

So perhaps another way would be to add something to the comms menu that orders a specific fighter/bomber to call in the support ship, since then it would stay still for the support ship as usual. Would that work/be easier?

[Sessile-Nomad]

... or a keyboard short cut which triggers the currently targeted friendly to initiate the call in support function.

[Goober5000]

That would make a lot of sense. Ordering a fighter/bomber to call for rearm could take advantage of most of the existing code. The only difference is that the trigger would be the player's command rather than the AI logic.